Do liberal arts colleges act like research universities when they seek to appoint new faculty members? Evidence shows that research universities bid aggressively for talent, using discretionary salary policies to achieve a diverse professoriate, appoint research stars, and fill vacancies in fields where market forces require differential salaries. As researchers like Ronald Ehrenberg of Cornell's Higher Education Research Institute have shown, universities routinely pay market-based salaries for faculty who teach undergraduates in fields such as computer science, economics, and the sciences. In this article, the authors investigated whether small liberal arts colleges that compete for faculty on a national scale follow research universities in paying salary differentials to new faculty or whether they stand aside from market competition. (Contains 2 tables and 2 notes.)